816 research outputs found
Natural Regulation of Energy Flow in a Green Quantum Photocell
Manipulating the flow of energy in nanoscale and molecular photonic devices
is of both fundamental interest and central importance for applications in
light harvesting optoelectronics. Under erratic solar irradiance conditions,
unregulated power fluctuations in a light harvesting photocell lead to
inefficient energy storage in conventional solar cells and potentially fatal
oxidative damage in photosynthesis. Here, we show that regulation against these
fluctuations arises naturally within a two-channel quantum heat engine
photocell, thus enabling the efficient conversion of varying incident solar
spectrum at Earth's surface. Remarkably, absorption in the green portion of the
spectrum is avoided, as it provides no inherent regulatory benefit. Our
findings illuminate a quantum structural origin of regulation, provide a novel
optoelectronic design strategy, and may elucidate the link between
photoprotection in photosynthesis and the predominance of green plants on
Earth.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure
Experimental and numerical validation of active flaps for wind turbine blades
An industrial active flap concept for wind turbine rotor blades is validated numerically by means of CFD, as well as experimentally in a wind tunnel environment. This paper presents the numerical and experimental results, as well as a discussion regarding the testing of airfoils equipped with active flaps with a highly loaded aft portion. A conceptual implementation for an offshore wind turbine and the potential for load reduction is shown by means of aeroelastic calculations. The work presented herein is conducted within the frame of the Induflap2 project and is partially funded by the Danish funding board EUDP
Coulomb-driven broken-symmetry states in doubly gated suspended bilayer graphene
The non-interacting energy spectrum of graphene and its bilayer counterpart
consists of multiple degeneracies owing to the inherent spin, valley and layer
symmetries. Interactions among charge carriers are expected to spontaneously
break these symmetries, leading to gapped ordered states. In the quantum Hall
regime these states are predicted to be ferromagnetic in nature whereby the
system becomes spin polarized, layer polarized or both. In bilayer graphene,
due to its parabolic dispersion, interaction-induced symmetry breaking is
already expected at zero magnetic field. In this work, the underlying order of
the various broken-symmetry states is investigated in bilayer graphene that is
suspended between top and bottom gate electrodes. By controllably breaking the
spin and sublattice symmetries we are able to deduce the order parameter of the
various quantum Hall ferromagnetic states. At small carrier densities, we
identify for the first time three distinct broken symmetry states, one of which
is consistent with either spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry or
spontaneously broken rotational symmetry
Numerical studies of the fractional quantum Hall effect in systems with tunable interactions
The discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect in GaAs-based
semiconductor devices has lead to new advances in condensed matter physics, in
particular the possibility for exotic, topological phases of matter that
possess fractional, and even non-Abelian, statistics of quasiparticles. One of
the main limitations of the experimental systems based on GaAs has been the
lack of tunability of the effective interactions between two-dimensional
electrons, which made it difficult to stabilize some of the more fragile
states, or induce phase transitions in a controlled manner. Here we review the
recent studies that have explored the effects of tunability of the interactions
offered by alternative two-dimensional systems, characterized by non-trivial
Berry phases and including graphene, bilayer graphene and topological
insulators. The tunability in these systems is achieved via external fields
that change the mass gap, or by screening via dielectric plate in the vicinity
of the device. Our study points to a number of different ways to manipulate the
effective interactions, and engineer phase transitions between quantum Hall
liquids and compressible states in a controlled manner.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, updated references; review for the CCP2011
conference, to appear in "Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Tunable interactions and phase transitions in Dirac materials in a magnetic field
A partially filled Landau level (LL) hosts a variety of correlated states of
matter with unique properties. The ability to control these phases requires
tuning the effective electron interactions within a LL, which has been
difficult to achieve in GaAs-based structures. Here we consider a class of
Dirac materials in which the chiral band structure, along with the mass term,
gives rise to a wide tunability of the effective interactions by the magnetic
field. This tunability is such that different phases can occur in a single LL,
and phase transitions between them can be driven in situ. The incompressible,
Abelian and non-Abelian, liquids are stabilized in interaction regimes
different from GaAs. Our study points to a realistic method of controlling the
correlated phases and studying the phase transitions between them in materials
such as graphene, bilayer graphene, and topological insulators.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; supersedes earlier versio
Energy gaps at neutrality point in bilayer graphene in a magnetic field
Utilizing the Baym-Kadanoff formalism with the polarization function
calculated in the random phase approximation, the dynamics of the
quantum Hall state in bilayer graphene is analyzed. Two phases with nonzero
energy gap, the ferromagnetic and layer asymmetric ones, are found. The phase
diagram in the plane , where is a
top-bottom gates voltage imbalance, is described. It is shown that the energy
gap scales linearly, $\Delta E\sim 14 B[T]K, with magnetic field.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, title changed, references added, JETP Letters
versio
Applying System Engineering to Pharmaceutical Safety
While engineering techniques are used in the development of medical devices and have been applied to individual healthcare processes, such as the use of checklists in surgery and ICUs, the application of system engineering techniques to larger healthcare systems is less common. System safety is the part of system engineering that uses modeling and analysis to identify hazards and to design the system to eliminate or control them. In this paper, we demonstrate how to apply a new, safety engineering static and dynamic modeling and analysis approach to healthcare systems. Pharmaceutical safety is used as the example in the paper, but the same approach is potentially applicable to other complex healthcare systems. System engineering techniques can be used in re-engineering the system as a whole to achieve the system goals, including both enhancing the safety of current drugs while, at the same time, encouraging the development of new drugs
Microscopic Polarization in Bilayer Graphene
Bilayer graphene has drawn significant attention due to the opening of a band
gap in its low energy electronic spectrum, which offers a promising route to
electronic applications. The gap can be either tunable through an external
electric field or spontaneously formed through an interaction-induced symmetry
breaking. Our scanning tunneling measurements reveal the microscopic nature of
the bilayer gap to be very different from what is observed in previous
macroscopic measurements or expected from current theoretical models. The
potential difference between the layers, which is proportional to charge
imbalance and determines the gap value, shows strong dependence on the disorder
potential, varying spatially in both magnitude and sign on a microscopic level.
Furthermore, the gap does not vanish at small charge densities. Additional
interaction-induced effects are observed in a magnetic field with the opening
of a subgap when the zero orbital Landau level is placed at the Fermi energy
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